Customers Reviews

Average customers review

(4 customer reviews)

Martin D

Date Added: Wednesday 30 January, 2013

After the sudden & unexpected demise of a media player I needed to find a replacement - after doing a fair bit of research the only player that really fit the bill was a C300. I was initially a slightly cautious because of the less than average r...Read moreeviews the C300 has received here & on a couple of other sites, but I have to say that as far as I'm concerned I think this player is great.

Firstly I was again impressed with AMP3's prompt delivery of the new player. Secondly the player itself was a comparative breeze to set up - to be fair I have owned a number of Popcorn Hour players over the years, so I suppose I'm not a novice. I installed a 1TB 2.5" SATA HDD that contained several 100GB of movies & music in one partition - the set up wizard found this & simply asked if I wanted to keep the files, after this it installed the system software in a new partition & was ready to go except for 2 firmware updates. Once these were installed the player has been amazing in its performance. The picture & sound are quite simply brilliant - this is the same for files on the HDD as well as for playing Bluray discs - You'll have to fit a BR drive yourself (or ask AMP3 to do it for you), but if you can use a screw driver you already know how to do this! The picture & sound from Blurays is as you'd expect - amazing! Currently a very big fan of the DTS-HD support this device has.

One feature of Popcorn Hour devices I have always been a fan of is that if there is a video, picture or music file format out there then you can be pretty certain that the player will be able to play it & the C300 is no exception - very handy for watching TV programs I have recorded on my PC.

If you have any media files shared on a network then I personally can't think of a player that does better - the C300 can do gigabit ethernet - as long as you have the network for it - even if you don't getting the player up & running on my network was a doddle & it shares movies, music etc with my TV, PC, a second media player (Popcorn Hour A110).

The apps available are a tad limited at the mo - I did hear-tell of a BBC iPlayer app, however there currently isn't one - this may well change however. Plenty of other internet radio apps though. Also a very handy iPad network remote control app there too.

Overall I am really impressed with this product & wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who asks! Same goes for AMPs too!

Jack Richards

Date Added: Thursday 21 June, 2012

Fundementally the most buggy platform I have ever bought.

Sadly Very Disapointed.

I have been a PCH user for 5 or so years, starting with the A100, then the A110 and most recently the C200 and C300.

C200 apartt from its Gigabit Ethernet limi...Read moretation has been great to use. The C300 sadly has been a different story.

Gigabit doesn't work with Cisco
Auto Negotiate for line speed doesn't default to 100MB
DHCP client is very flakey, tried with Cisco ASA DHCP, Linux (Centos), QNAP, MS - all hit and miss as to wether you get a lease.
SMB client - doesn't re-connect if DHCP lease takes too long.
SMB. Variable performance, stops, glitches and hangs
NFS - good when it works, generally only TCP-NFS works, but fails to connect shares if DHCP takes to long, fails to re-connect after that.
User Interface - Very slow, jerky at HD resolutions, no keypad number jump ( eg type 547 and the menu moves to item 547 ) makes searching lond indexes painfull.
Internal Drives and USB lock for first 30 seconds and do not allow you to browse either disks, even if the internal is ready and okay.
The normally great codec support seems to be less than 100% these days
The firmaware and patch release cycle - nothing now for 4 months even with many known bugs
IPlayer still not supported
Limited apps on market, seems to be far far fewer than for C200
Finally, player hangs and crashes requiring reboot on a fairly regular basis
Menu un-intuitive, cluttered and very clunky

Right now I've struggling. After the first week, I almost sent it back. It's just I know - Its got to get better.

This device has the potential to be fantastic. Popcorn have been my pick for years.

Is it worth buying - yes, but only if the latest firmware is not dated feb 2012 when you buy it.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Ash D

Date Added: Tuesday 28 February, 2012

The C-300 User Manual has been released and is now available for download from the Popcorn Hour website Support page http://support.popcornhour.com/article.aspx?id=1145

4 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Dave Richards

Date Added: Wednesday 08 February, 2012

Beware: There is no manual supplied with this product. There is no manual available for download. Basically there is no manual. It doesn't exist. Normally I wouldn't be worried as I'm pretty tech savvy, but this product definitely needs a manual as i...Read moret is made of many separate pieces of software, all configured differently, and full of bugs! If you're very familiar with PCH's other products you may be OK, but if you're not I would suggest you stay away from this one at least until the bugs are ironed out and a manual is developed.

e.g. It's not mentioned anywhere but there is a Samba server available for this (you need to download NMT tools separately from the firmware and install it, then find the menu where it's hidden to start it), the server requires a username and password to connect, but guess what - no manual and not mentioned anywhere. Hours of trawling web sites I found the details for a different product which happened to work (username: nmt, password: 1234).

Another thing... I live in UK, ordered this from AMP3 who are a UK supplier, yet this came with a continental power socket, imagine my disappointment when it arrived when I couldn't even plug it in. Fortunately I was able to source a standard "kettle" lead which worked.

Other things to note: There is no BBC iPlayer on this device, despite the pop box screenshots all over this site and others and several internet announcements suggesting that there is. No NetFlix either. In fact not many apps at all (only 64 in total), useful ones are YouTube which is OK, Facebook which is poor, Twitter I haven't used, and Flickr which I haven't tried yet either. I would have loved to have iPlayer and NetFlix and pretty gutted that they're not included as this was the main reason I picked PCH as they claim iPlayer is supported and included in the app store.

Support is non-existent, user forums are few and far between and not particularly helpful. I suggest you get familiar with www.networkmediatank.com and www.avforums.com to pick up essential information that is not provided (no user manual!).

On the up side - it plays just about anything you throw at it, and it does so very competently, particularly HD content. I'm hoping the bugs and absent features get fixed in future firmware updates, and a manual is produced.

AMP3 RESPONSE:
Dear Dave,
Thank you for taking the time to write a product review, though we are sorry to hear that you are not entirely satisfied with your product at the moment.

Popcorn Hour have confirmed a full English version of the manual should be available to download from their website very soon.
There should have been a brief 'quick start' guide within the box, alongside a UK power adapter - however we are more than happy to send these to you should you still require them.

With regards to the likes of iPlayer and Netflix, our team are currently investigating this as we are aware these both work absolutely fine on the A300. A member of our Sales/Technical Team will be in direct contact no later than Monday the 13th with a more detailed response, as soon as we have run full testing ourselves.

Please do bear in mind that all items are covered by our ‘7 Day Unwanted Item Policy’ which means that within seven working days of an order being received, it can be returned for a refund or exchange.

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